


A Lyre to Soften the Heart of Hell

by lexicale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexicale/pseuds/lexicale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has carried Sam out of fires before, and Hell is just one more fire.</p><p>Another 'Sam gets his soul back' fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lyre to Soften the Heart of Hell

**Author's Note:**

> This was written right after 6x03 premiered. It does not take into account anything that occurred post 6x03.

What creeps Dean out the most, he decides, is that the fire doesn't make any noise. He hears the occasional crack of warped wood splintering, or the moan of metal as it heats up, but the fire itself is silent. There's no crackling, no whoosh of air as the flames breath in all the oxygen. Dean holds up a hand over his face, although there's no smoke, the heat flickering over his cheeks. He can't help it. He knows this isn't real, but he can't help but treat the fire was if it were. Dream worlds, even in Hell, make no sense to him.

He works his way across the creaking floorboards, navigating through the patches of fire. He has no indication that he's headed in the right direction -- he just knows he has to move forward.

\-----

_"So?" Dean demands almost immediately. "What is it?"_

_He's been waiting forever for Cas to get back to him. He's been waiting since Pennsylvania, when he told the angel in no uncertain terms that he wanted answers. Not that Castiel had been quick to jump, but he'd showed back up, a couple weeks later._

_Castiel just has this look he gets. It's not that much different from the look he always has, but Dean's good at reading people. This is Cas's 'I know this thing but I don't really want to tell you about it because you're going to get all human on me and I don't know how to handle that shit' look. At least, that's how Dean would describe it._

_He's not sure Cas would exactly agree with his terminology._

_"C'mon, Cas," Dean goads, good at getting what he wants. "Spit it out."_

_"That is an unattractive idiom."_

_"Your_ face _is unattractive. Swear to god, Cas, I'm going to start hitting things in a second. And if that doesn't do it, I'll start taking the Lord's name in vain, or whatever it is that gets your angelic panties in a twist."_

 _Castiel sighs, put upon, and Dean_ definitely _knows_ that _look, because it's one his Dad used to wear all during Dean and Sam's teenaged years:_ Lord help me, this child will drive me to drink. __

_"You won't like it, Dean," Cas warns once more, but Dean's getting tired of the song and dance, begins to glare in earnest and Castiel relents. "Hell is not a place like Earth, just as Heaven isn't. They are spiritual places. The physical has no meaning there. When you were taken to Hell, it was your soul that was taken and tortured--"_

_"_ Felt _real enough," Dean grouses._

_"--But not your body." Cas ignores his interruption. "Sam physically cast himself into Hell, but there's no room for that physical body there. It cannot exist. So it was almost immediately rejected, returned to Earth."_

_"Alright," Dean replies, feeling like he's been left hanging. His voice carries that irritation. "So, now we know how he got back. So what?"_

_"But he_ didn't _get back, Dean. Not all of him, at least. I said that the cage rejected his body. I said nothing of his soul."_

_Dean feels a frisson of cold fear run up him, and it's only half for Sam. He feels dirty for thinking it, but the first place he goes is back into his own memories, his own recollections of being a soul in Hell, and at first he can't see past that to think about how awful it must be for Sam. At first, he's just thinking about his own time on the rack, and he's stuck there, holding that breath, for four painful seconds._

_Then he lets it out._

_"Sam's..." He starts, but he doesn't know his destination, so his brother's name just stays there, stuck in the air and drifting wild. Dean wants to take it back, keep it somewhere safe._

_"Sam's soul is still in the cage, Dean. The reason your brother has been behaving oddly is that he quite literally has no soul."_

_Dean breathes slowly, staving off something that smells like a panic attack. He's known his brother was in Hell, the deepest, dankest part of Hell, this whole year. It shouldn't be strange to realize that he's still there. It shouldn't be painful to go back to that belief._

_Except it is. Because he's spent the last few weeks thinking that he was with his brother. That his brother was safe. That his brother was going to be okay. And now it feels like he's been a fool, that he's been up here rejoicing and hunting and living normally,_ happily _, while Sammy's got a spear lodged somewhere under the eighth rib and thirty nine lashes on his back._

_At least the last year, he'd carried that burden. There hadn't been a day that went by that he didn't wake up thinking 'My brother's in Hell. My brother's in Hell being tortured and he's screaming and now I'm going to get up and have a shower, then make some coffee. My brother's in a worse piece of Hell than I ever saw and he's going to be there forever and I'm going to go to work like nothing's wrong.' That was his burden to carry. It was the least he could do._

_Except for almost four weeks now, an entire month and who knows how long in Hell-time, he hasn't been thinking that. He's slacked off. He hasn't been doing even the smallest thing he could do to be with Sam, and the guilt rushes back in, more now, swift and cold and breaking down whatever thin walls that Lisa and Ben have been able to build in him. It doesn't take but two breaths for him to know what he has to do._

_"We gotta get him back, Cas. We have to save him."_

\-----

Ten paces in, he realizes that he recognizes this place. Wherever he is, he's been here before. For one stomach roiling moment he thinks he must be somewhere in Hell he's been before, that he came _back_ , after escaping, after finally getting out, he was back and any minute now someone was going to put him on the rack. Worse, he never wanted to be the kind of person that knew the topography of Hell, find it _familiar_.

But the moment passes, because this isn't a memory from Hell, it's a memory from his life, maybe a little fuzzier now after forty years in the pit. It's Sam's apartment. It's that little maze of tiny rooms and ridiculous ferns that Dean used to watch Sam in, before he _broke_ in and pulled Sam back out onto the road, starting this whole, fucked up mess. He doesn't have to look to know that Jessica's paintings have already burnt up, their wood frames persisting, nonsensically, because Hell obeys pain, not physics.

"Shit," he mutters, knowing he should have expected this. There won't be a rack, here. There won't be chains and hooks and men with knives for fingers. There won't be women with teeth in place of eyes and the burn of other people's bile against his sides. Dean's a physical kind of guy. Before Hell, Dean saw the best things in life as the soft curve of a breast, the warm metal hood over the engine of his baby, the smooth burn of good booze, the kind he could never afford but always managed to get his hands on. The collection of Dean's life is a bundle of sense memory -- less a fully fledged idea and more of a concept. 

Hell seemed to recognize that, acknowledging Dean in a way his dad and his brother rarely had. His Hell had been a physically manifest kind of place, full of torture and blood, abuse and broken bones. It wouldn't be, for Sam. Sam, who was so cerebral, who lived so much in his own head, emerging only when Dean poked and prodded him, teased him to frustration, until Sam had to respond. Sam's Hell is an emotional place. It is an assortment of remembered pain, not meant to tear his body apart, because he doesn't even _have_ a body, here, but to tear apart his psyche. 

"Sam," he grumbles, can't help but groan. "Why you gotta _be_ like this...?"

Sam could never do _anything_ simply. Dean finds himself thinking of his own time in Hell as fairly straight forward, then banishes that thought, never wanting to think anything positive about it.

He pushes himself forward, side stepping a burning bookcase, and Dean sees thick law books mixed with art history texts, all being eternally eaten by the flame. They are the vestiges of a life long past, now all ash and dirt and built over, a life Sam never got to have. Dean's distant enough from that pain, now, that he can feel bad about it. He's grown enough to actually mourn the fact that his brother never got to see where this all went. Because Sam never had a chance. He was damned from the day of his birth, and Dean resents that. Resents, for the first time, his parents. His mom.

Sam was made evil, inherently, but he wasn't a bad person for that.

Dean knows that no one else on Earth could have done as much good with as much evil in them as Sam, because Sam's a devil that wants to save people. Sam's a devil that wanted to become a lawyer, wanted to mend the world, wanted to get married and make his girl happy. Sam never got to have a chance, and Dean wants to be the one to give it to him. Because if he can get Sam out of here, they'll be free. The apocalypse will be over, Lucifer will be gone, and Sam, for the first time in his life, won't have a destiny.

Dean wants to give him that.

In the center of the cage is a bed. It is a queen sized bed with no scorch marks on it, even as the walls and the bedsides burn around it. Dean glances up at the catalyst of the flame -- a charred skeleton, its blackened maw gaping down in an eternal, silent scream. Dean winces, remembering trying to counsel Sam through the nightmares the first time.

When he gets to the bed, he doesn't find Sam. Or he does, but it's not the Sam he expects.

Sam lays in the center of the bed, arms flopped up above his head, baptismal blood smeared across his forehead. Except he's small. Maybe five feet tall, in total, his limbs coltish and skinny, his hair flopping over such a young face. Twelve, Dean thinks. Maybe thirteen. Sam before the growth spurts, Sam before the broad shoulders and the muscle bulk. Sam when he was still small enough for Dean to protect bodily, and its hard to fight the protective urge that clamors up inside of him at the sight.

"Sam," he starts, then tries again. "Sammy."

Except Sammy isn't looking at him, just staring straight up at the ceiling, his eyes vacant. It sends an icy shudder through Dean, foreign in the heat of the fire. This isn't the worst that the cage has supplied for Sam. Dean can tell. He remembers staring like that, he remembers it was when they were being kind. This is Hell's version of comfort, because in comparison to all the rest, it's a trivial thing.

This. The end of Sam's dreams, the end of his girlfriend, the end of everything Sam had once fought so hard for. This is a trivial thing, in comparison to whatever else Sam's gone through, and Dean doesn't want to think about that. He can't even begin to imagine the kinds of things that have happened in front of Sam's eyes.

"C'mon pipsqueak," he says, trying for levity. He reaches out, tugging Sam over to him, finding him frighteningly easy to pick up, cradle him like he's still just a kid. It's not something Dean's ever really been able to do. He was never big enough to carry Sam like this, the way that Dad would when he picked them up from the couch to put them to bed. It plucks at something -- hurts -- and Dean clutches the limp body tighter.

"C'mon buddy...We're gonna get out of here."

Dean's carried Sam out of fires before -- it's pretty much his purpose in life.

\-----

_Dean knows that saying he'll get Sam back from Hell is easier than doing it._

 _Cas can help him. Apparently getting into and out of Hell isn't that big a deal. If you're not_ meant _to be in Hell, then it can't hold you. Like a one way mirror, it only works for the poor sons of bitches on the other side. If you're not meant to be there, the walls don't have meaning and the bars on the windows are just decorative._

_The hard part is pulling out a soul that is meant to be there, because Castiel can't just magic Sam back like he did Dean(even if he took his sweet angelic time)._

_"Sam's soul is intended to be in Hell."_

_"_ Do not _say that to me. You do not want to be sayin' that shit to me right now." Dean doesn't think Castiel will much care of Dean decks him. In fact, Dean's fairly certain that he'll end up with a broken wrist and not much else to show for it besides Castiel looking at him quizzically, but that's not really the point._

_"Whether or not I say it, it remains the truth. Sam threw himself into Hell. Worse, into the cage, as far down into Hell as one can ever go -- as far from God's grace as any creature, living or dead, can ever be. And he was tainted to begin with. Beyond redemption. Even if he had lived a long and good life here on Earth, he was always destined for Hell."_

_Dean almost does deck the angel then, but stops because Sam(Sam's_ body _) is sitting on the edge of one of the beds, looking like that doesn't even hurt. Dean's brother would have winced, hurt and trying not to show it, hurt and carrying that wound in him next to all the other times people called him freak, burden, monster, abomination, disappointment. Right next to all the times Dean or John told him he wasn't good enough, and goddamn if Dean could go back in time and take that back._

_But Sam's body doesn't care. Sam's body only feels one kind of wound now._

_"Don't you talk about him like that. Don't you dare forget that he threw himself into Hell for us," Dean manages to get out, voice tight, carrying the burden in Sam's place. Because maybe he stumbled, maybe he lost his faith, and maybe things were bad between them, these last few years, but Dean's had a year to remember Sam, a year to think about every stupid memory he has of his Hell-caught little brother, and there's some twenty years, before all of this, twenty years of watching the shaggy haired freak_ try _. Always trying, always trying to be better, even if it was at being a better pain in the ass. Dean knows he played his part in bringing his brother down, dragging him down to a place where he thought that spreading his arms wide and letting himself fall into Hell was the only good thing he could do._

_It's an ugly thought, and a thorn that Dean still feels._

_"I'm gettin' him back, and don't you say anything like that ever again." Dean doesn't bother with a threat. It'd be meaningless in the face of Cas's angelic permanence. He can only depend on his friendship with the angel, that he'll hear how much Dean needs him to pack that kind of shit in._

_Apparently Cas gets it, because he nods, a shallow motion._

_"So tell me. How do I get him back?" Dean continues._

_"You gonna ask me what I think?" Sam chimes in for the first time, and Dean's almost surprised. He's been treating Sam kind of like a sack of meat since Castiel revealed what happened, mostly because this Sam_ is _just a sack of meat. His memories are intact, but it's like having a photocopy of Sam -- the right shade, the right words, the right outline, but without color. Without depth._

_"I woulda thought you'd leap at the chance to get your soul back." Dean shrugs, because he figured that was a given._

_"Would you?" Sam returns, no real challenge in his voice, and Dean doesn't get it. Sam continues. "After you came back from Hell, if someone gave you the chance to come back with all your memories and your body but let you have no memories of Hell, no ability to feel non-physical pain, wouldn't you take it? I'm better at hunting and I don't even have any memories of Hell. Better than that, I don't even feel bad about anything that happened before. Mom. Jess. Dad. It doesn't hurt anymore, Dean."_

_"Yeah," Dean feels his voice twist with that flicker of desperation, understanding what Sam's saying but just not_ getting it _. "Sure, but you don't feel_ good _either. You can't feel pain, and I'm sure that's great, but you can't feel anything else."_

 _"And maybe that's a reasonable price to pay." Sam's response is as immediate as it is unaffected. It's the same thought that Dean's been having for awhile now('_ That's not my brother _'), but it's confirmed now, and he knows why. He doesn't feel the fear and malice he did before he knew. This Sam isn't evil. He's not bad. He's just not Sam._

_"Maybe. But my little brother is still in the pit, and I'm not leaving him there any longer. I can't." Dean's lips purse. "I gotta save him. I owe him that."_

_"You promised," Sam's body reminds him._

_"I didn't promise_ you _, and you don't care enough to hold me to it, do you?" Dean smirks._

_Sam's body shakes his head._

_"Not really."_

_Dean takes in a deep breath, committed to this now, feeling a sense of purpose, a drive. It's something he's been missing for awhile now -- maybe even before Sam cast himself into the pit. It's always been Dean's job to look after his brother._

_He's been slacking._

\-----

He doesn't remember leaving Hell the first time, it's all a blur in his memory. One minute he was gutting some poor schmuck, then there was a bright, burning fire under his skin and he woke up underground. After clawing himself to the surface and finding himself out in the middle of nowhere with a mysterious hand print burned into him, he'd been a little distracted.

He doesn't remember leaving Hell the first time, and never would, but he won't ever forget leaving Hell the second time.

He'd been terrified, walking in, choked his breath in his throat as he fell, drifted through thousands of layers(deeper, ever deeper), flew passed a million scenes of torment, passed through walls like they didn't exist until he knew he was before the cage. He couldn't have described it. Not if he'd had a thousand years and the words of a million poets. It was a cage, and it was colder than anything on Earth ever could be. It was a cage, and it was more than that. That was the extent of what he could say about it.

Of course, walking out of Hell is worse than entering, because it was always going to be the hard part. After all, it isn't the going to Hell that sucks -- it's the being stuck there.

But Dean still walks out of the cage, straight through walls again. They're real, but only to the people caught inside them. To Dean they are little more than curtains, shifting and dragging against the floor. Dean remembers being a soul here, looking desperately for a door, a window, anything. He'd never known that he could have just walked through the walls.

Sam, though, Sam is meant to be here. It's a cruel truth, as much as Dean wouldn't let Castiel speak it. Sam may be the best person Dean's ever met, but he's also some kind of prince of Hell. Only Sam Winchester could be both of those things at once, and the minute they leave the cage Dean feels the weight of him. It's just a soul in his arms, but it _feels_ like a body, substantial and firm with mass.

Dean looks up, searching for some kind of path or stairway, not really wanting to scale the walls. He knows, somehow, that if he were a less literal person, he could just fly. It's what someone like Sam'd do. But Dean's still Dean, and he still lives in the physical world, still sees everything around him in those terms, and the stairs appear, a physical interpretation of Dean's intent to leave.

"Sammy?" he queries, looking down at the soul; pure, unadulterated Sam, beautiful but damaged. Sam's eyes are open -- not asleep -- but he's not looking anywhere in particular either. He's gazing at nothing at all, as if he's still in the cage. As if he's still on that bed, watching Jess burn away into ash.

"Hey, Sammy," he tries again, voice going big-brother soft, a tone he hasn't used in years and years. "It's okay. It's over. I'm going to get you out here, I promise. We're going top side again, then...whatever you need. Wherever you need to go or whatever you need to say...I'll--Well. You know me. The most I can do is promise to be less of an asshole. What do you think?"

Dean's not sure that Sam thinks anything, because he doesn't reply. Doesn't react.

Something nasty and selfish wriggles its way through Dean's chest -- a whispered voice that tells him that Sam's gonna need a lot of time. That maybe Sam'll never be Sam again, not like Dean needs him to be. Sam's body up top might not be _Sam_ , but he remembers what it's like to _be_ Sam. If Dean squints and pretends, he can have that life. He can get back on the road, he can drive around with his brother and it'll almost be like before. 

It would be more than this. It would be more than what he'll get if he puts this catatonic soul back into Sam and spends years, maybe his whole life, caring for a little brother that's even less Sam than he is now.

Dean curses, and it has to be Hell's influence, still under his skin after all this time. Because there's an important part of that that he's forgetting: he'd be leaving Sam's soul here, to suffer indefinitely. To languish. Left behind because his big brother needs unquenchably and maybe doesn't care what ends up on the roadside so long as he gets what he wants.

"Fuck this place," Dean mutters, glaring at the living tissue that forms the sick structure of Hell. "I'm not that person anymore," he tells it, tells no one in particular, tells himself, moving forward to the stairs with his arms tight around Sam, as if he's afraid his body'll rebel against him and drop the soul right there.

He starts up the stairs, one foot in front of the other, and has no idea how far he has to go. For some reason, he doesn't imagine it's far. He knows he's in the deepest part of Hell, so far from the sun that it might as well be a myth, but his stupid human brain still thinks ' _Well, didn't take me long to get here_ ', as if it were that easy. All he has to do is walk up some stairs, which doesn't seem too bad. Sam's head lolls on his shoulder, and he speaks again, the tread of his boots making horrible squishing noises as they press down on flesh.

"It's been a long year, Sammy. Longer for you, I know." His hand squeezes around his brother's thin shoulder, and he's so small. He's so fucking small. How had Sam ever been this tiny? How had something this tiny ever become the giant he calls a brother? A part of him almost wishes he could have this Sam back. Start over. Raise him without fear and motel rooms, raise him with a bedroom and a chance to go to school and not feel like a freak. It's the life he wants for Ben, and Dean feels sick that he's giving away the life that Sam should have had to someone else. 

"Kept my word," he continues. "Went back to Lisa. She was kind enough to take my pathetic ass in -- way too generous, if you ask me. She...She's been great. We've been great. I settle down well, man. Who would of guessed? 'Sides you, I mean. And...and I have a kid. Kinda. I mean, Ben doesn't call me _dad_ or anything. That'd be weird. He's like eleven. Ten, when I moved in. But still. We do...you know. Dad stuff. Sometimes feels like an out of body experience, watching me try to coach some kid in baseball. Showin' him how to work on a car. That's the stuff I get. Then there's the stuff I don't get. He's real into these stupid cartoons on TV, I don't even know what the hell they're about, most of the time. Collects some lame ass cards or something. I'm not as good at those things. But I try, you know? I don't wanna be...I don't wanna be Dad. Not all the way, anyway. I loved the man, but there're things-- I don't wanna be the guy that shuts out all the stuff he isn't interested in. It's my job to get into the things Ben's into. Dad never got that. I mean, he cared. He cared like hell. He just...if it wasn't huntin', if it wasn't about gettin' back at what killed Mom, he just didn't think it was worthwhile."

He looks down at Sam, hoping again for something, but whatever it is that Sam's waiting for, Dean hasn't said it yet. So he just keeps going, words spilling over stairs as he continues to ascend.

"And that was his bad, Sammy. That was his bad. He should'a been there, when you were talkin' about book reports and wanting to try out for the science fair. Shouldn'ta mattered how it helped the hunt. He should'a...he should'a been interested in you. And I should'a had your back on that. Not sayin' that you were squeaky clean, though. You were real irritating with all the door slamming and back talking. _That_ I could'a done without. But, the other stuff... Sammy, I wish you could see Ben. He's not really the same kinda kid you were, either -- not so much with the doing homework -- but he's good. He's a real good kid. Cares about his mom. Does his chores. Well, most of the time." He smiles a bit, focusing ahead as he climbs, the staircase circling around a huge, empty chamber, a spiral staircase that barely bends at all it's so large. "And I...think about bein' a good dad. Isn't that some crazy shit?"

He huffs a laugh.

"Shit, man. I barely survived raisin' you. _You_ barely survived me raisin' you. Thank god for Lisa. She gets this look, this _mom face_ , whenever I'm about to do something stupid and Winchester. If she didn't I probably would've taken Ben out to a bar by now or something. You have no idea how much crazy shit from our childhood I thought was normal. Well, _you_ probably have an idea. Like I said, man. Thank god for Lisa."

It's not hard to talk, at first. Dean's always been good at talking. Sam wouldn't think so. But Sam always wants those awkward, emotional conversations about everyone's deepest darkest secrets, and really, fuck that. It's why Dean always ends up opening up to everyone _but_ Sam. They don't mind if he blabs about the best sex he ever had, or the first time he got under the Impala's hood. They don't mind if he takes awhile to just shoot the breeze, talking anecdotes and amusing little stories, a thousand of them sprinkled all across America and collected over years. Sam? Sam always wants to get right to the heart of an issue, which Dean has no patience for.

But this? Talking to his little brother about all the stupid, normal shit he's done over the past year? He can do that.

So he talks. He talks about his job, his home, and then his _new_ home, his pick-up truck(and hey, it's no Impala, but it'll do), his friends, his favorite bar. He talks about Lisa and Ben, and Sid and the guys at work that sometimes go out for drinks with him. At first, there's so much he wants to talk about. He feels like it'll take another year just to tell Sam all of it, all those millions of normal moments that Sam had longed for all his life. Except, Dean realizes, that they all blend together. He's lived a year in American suburbia, and he can't say he hasn't been happy, because he has been, but it's not really the kind of life that comes with a lot of stories. There's no frantic get-aways, no knock out brawls. There's no exploding heads or skin suits or charred bones. It's all...normal. And eventually the words run out, stutter away as he tries to think of something more, some other meager thing to share, and then he's just putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward. Moving upward.

In lieu of words, Dean begins to hum, then figures ' _fuck it_ ', and starts up singing. Joan Jett's 'I Love Rock and Roll', then Black Sabbath's 'Hole in the Sky'. Even Hell doesn't deserve Dean attempting Bon Scott or Robert Plant, so he tries to remember the music of his that Sam actually _liked_ , but the best he can do is Alice Cooper and Bob Dylan. Gradually his voice disappears, sinking into Hell's infinite void and lapped up by infernal creatures, starved for joy and life. Eventually, Dean can't talk anymore, and he can't sing, and he can't do anything but keep marching up the stairs, preserving his breath for the effort.

The stairs have changed from flesh to metal, and the light dims, the walls getting darker. Every step echoes hollow, and Dean realizes that he's been quiet for a long time, longer than he thought. He glances down at Sam, but the boy in his arms hasn't moved, hasn't shifted. 

"Hey, Sammy, so--" Except he has no where to go with that, and he cuts off awkwardly. He clears his throat, looking back up at the iron steps, each one wrought into intricate patterns, like Hell cared about quaint architecture and an artistic finish. The air is dry and stifling, warming as he gets further away from the dead cold of the cage. He hates to breath it, feel that rancid crap make its way back into him, this time into his body instead of his soul, like pollution. He doesn't know if it's all in his head or not, but he thinks he can feel it in his veins, slowing his blood to a crawl, slipping into every pore like a tiny hook and saying _You can come back_.

He jerks, eyes snapping open though he doesn't remember when they shut. He splays his feet, trying to get some balance as he sways, almost falling over the edge of the stairs. He breathes hard.

"Sorry...Sorry, Sammy. Sorry." He manages to shift his brother so that he can brush one hand through Sam's hair, trying to comfort. Sam doesn't respond, and Dean feels a whine pitch in his throat, baring his teeth through the pain. He breathes seven harsh breaths through clenched teeth, fear whispering in the dark.

He tries to calm himself down, tries to abate the urge to run nipping at his heels, and takes another step forward, then another. Then ten. He's still counting, eighty nine stairs later, holding on to the numbers like they'll make the world make sense. He notices, twelve steps after that, that his lips are moving, silently forming the numbers as he continues to plod forward.

One foot in front of the other.

Sammy's small body didn't seem like much of a burden, down in the cage. It had been a trivial weight, not much more than Dad used to make them carry during endurance training. It seems unreal now. Sam is like steel, like lead. He's so heavy, and Dean's arms are aching, five hundred and seventy three steps later. Each step is worse than the last. He feels like he's being pulled backwards, and maybe he is. Maybe every step is just a futile motion, the gravity of Hell pulling them back in, like a black hole swirling beneath them.

He can hear the voices, now, muttering all around him, even from inside the walls. They're telling him that he can go. He doesn't have to stay here. All he has to do is let go of Sam. Sam is dragging him down. Sam, that eternal albatross around his neck, wearing him out long before Dean even had the chance to grow up, to become an adult. Dean looks down at Sam, and for the first time sees all the little threads, woven needle sharp into his brother's skin, stretching back behind him. Dean doesn't have to look to know where they go -- his brother is chained to the cage, and even though the threads don't tug on Sam's skin, Dean knows they're anchoring him. The further he takes Sam away from the cage, the worse the weight will get, but this is the only way out. Sam can't leave the cage. He can't bear himself up from Hell. Someone else has to do that for him. Someone else has to take that weight. Dean's spent enough time around magic to know what a trial looks like, and it's not one that Sam can fulfill. Sam's free to leave forever if he can just get out, but he's chained so he can never leave: the cruel twist of a deal, a spell, the taunting bindings of the preternatural that always keep humanity down. Sam's not allowed to saved himself, so Dean's going to have to do it for him.

Dean's legs feel wooden. His movements are less an act of will and more mere impetus, the monotonous drive to lift his leg and pull himself up one more stair. One stair closer. Ever one stair closer to the light. Except he's not certain that he's going anywhere, anymore. The stairs go on forever, and all around him is nothing but Hell. He expects some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, but instead just finds more tunnel, dark and foreboding. Sam drags at him, weighing him down until every step is a battle, one foot in front of the other, but each stair takes several seconds for him to overcome, every muscle in his body straining to keep them going.

And he knows, just _knows_ , that all he has to do is let go. If he lets go, Sam will snap back to the cage and Dean will fly out of Hell as if he'd been put into a slingshot. He'd be free. He'd be back up on the green earth with his soul still firmly in place and he could live his whole life and never go back to this bone-lined prison. All he has to do is put Sam down. It's a small price. A simple motion. It would require almost no effort. All he has to do is pick up the knife and put the next soul over on the rack. 

It's all he has to do, to be free of this place.

"Dean."

The voice is small, tender, one that Dean hasn't heard in decades, and it's laced with pain. Dean looks down, and Sam's looking up at him, except Dean sees more than ever before, because Dean isn't looking at Sam, he's looking straight into Sam's _soul_. He stops, paused still with either foot on a step, hands clutching at his burden. He feels his eyes burn with tears, for the first time since he set foot in this god forsaken place.

"Sam," he manages to get out, beyond the constricting muscles of his throat. Sam's eyes aren't vacant. He's still here. He's still in there. His slight hand is pressed to Dean's sternum, firm enough to feel the elevated beat of his heart and Sam doesn't say anything else. Dean jerks in a stuttering breath and has to shut his eyes for a moment before he speaks again. 

"It's okay, Sammy," he says finally, remembering only faintly the words he'd spoken to Sam the first time he carried him out of the fire, watching flames flick out the windows of his childhood home. He almost laughs a little, a weary smile stretching thin on his lips as he looks down at his brother. "As long as I'm around, nothing bad's gonna happen to you." The words are distantly recalled promises that he always made but could never keep, not in the face of the world they existed in. But he makes them anyways, because Sam hears them the same way, every time. 

Sam's face always goes soft and lax, hopeful, when Dean tells him it'll be alright, and that big-brother-faith doesn't fail Dean now. He feels Sam's hand tighten into a fist, clutching Dean's shirt, and Dean steels himself, taking another painful step. Then another. And another.

The metal stairs gives way to stone, carved into dark rock, and there are dried leaves that crunch under Dean's boots, turning to dirt as they do so. The voices get closer, whispering over his shoulder, but Dean never looks behind him, Sam his Eurydice and laying in front of him in his arms, but Dean is still terrified to look anywhere but the next step, the next rise, every little inch closer to the surface and out of this Abaddon. 

He doesn't know how long he walks or how far.

He just puts one foot in front of the other and carries Sam out of Hell.

\-----

_"I really hate this plan," Dean says for the fifty-seventh time._

_"Understood," Castiel replies, standing next to him outside of the door._

_"Why_ is _there a door to Hell, anyway? It's stupid."_

_"It's not really a door, per se--" Castiel starts, but Dean cuts him off._

_"Shut up, Cas."_

_Dean never planned on being back here, standing in the cemetery that surrounds Wyoming's charming little Devil's Gate. The sky is overcast and it's daytime but the grey light does little to make things look less foreboding. The skeletal trees reach their brittle bones out over the ancient headstones, the Gate itself the only sturdy looking thing in the area. They don't have the Colt to open it, but Castiel assures them that he has a way to do so without releasing a horde of demons, which is a plus._

_Dean feels like a junkie coming down from a fix, almost jittering out of his skin. He's not much for showing his weaknesses, and his general reaction to fear is to pony up and act like it doesn't bother him._

_But Hell is kind of on a whole other level._

_He's about to walk back into Hell._

_After forty years -- more time there than he's been alive in Earth -- after near endless torture and capitulation, after subjugation, pain, horror and the sound of his own soul ripping, he's still going to walk willingly back into Hell._

_He can't really wrap his mind around the concept, but he's still trapped in a vague state of pure terror, using all his energy to keep himself standing there while Castiel works his mojo, using his angelsticker like a key, instead of running for the hills and not looking back. Honestly, that's the saner option at this point._

_Except Sam is still in Hell, longer and deeper than Dean, and who knows how they're tearing into all the tender pieces of his brother that John and Dean could never manage to harden up? The bits that still wanted to get a dog, even when he was fifteen and knew better. The bits that still teared up sometimes, when they couldn't save everyone. The bits that thought he could just go to college and live a normal life._

_Those were the parts of Sam that Dean used to hate the most. Dean used to wish his brother would finish growing up, fall in line, stop trying to bring them down with demands for something_ better _. Dean doesn't hate it anymore. Those are the parts he's missed the most._

_And he needs to walk back into Hell to get his brother back so that he can tell him that._

_Sam's body is sitting on a tombstone behind them, and Dean really wishes he could hoist this off on him -- tell Sam to go get his own damned soul(heh, "damned soul") back, and spare Dean the agony of walking back into Hell. Except Dean knows enough about Hell to guess that this isn't going to be easy. It's going to hurt, and it's going to hurt in all the worst places. And the only thing that's gonna get him through it is the fortitude that Sam's body just doesn't have any more._

_Sam'd give up and say 'fuck this' the minute it got hard because he's not emotionally invested, like Dean is. Sam could_ define _'emotional investment', but he couldn't tell you what it feels like._

_Still doesn't change the fact that Dean'd give almost anything to not have to do this._

_"It's done," Castiel says, standing next to the cracked open door. There's no demon army pouring out, and Dean counts it as a victory._

_'_ Every little thing _,' he thinks to himself, walking back over to the entrance, looking at the angel. Sam's behind them, watching, and Dean can feel the gaze. He just can't feel anything else._

_"You sure this is going to work?"_

_"I am reasonably certain."_

_"I am about to walk back into_ Hell _, Harvey Birdman. You'd best be more than 'reasonably certain,'" Dean growls. Castiel gives him a curiously blank expression and Dean elbows him in the side. Hard._

_Of course, the angel doesn't budge, the bastard._

_"Tell me I'm gonna get out of here whole." He gives in a little, voice edging too close to pleading. It's the reassurance that he normally turns to Sam for, but what's left of Sam is sitting twenty paces behind him, sharpening their knifes like nothing big is happening. Even so, it still feels like a betrayal, turning to someone else, but Cas is the only person(relatively speaking) here. He's piss poor at reassurance, but he's all Dean has, and that almost sends Dean to his knees right there._

_"I believe that you want me to tell you that you will be fine," Castiel says, after a short pause, enough feeling in him to at least_ want _to identify, even if he can't. "I cannot give you that assurance. But I can at least tell you that it doesn't matter, because I have already tried to talk you out of this, as has your human mentor, and even if I told you that it would destroy you, I believe I have watched you long enough to say that you will still go. What I say won't change anything."_

_Dean chokes out a laugh, and he's a little embarrassed to realize that his knees are literally shaking. He didn't know that that kind of thing really happened._

_But Cas is right._

_Hell is the last place in all of existence that Dean wants to be -- feels repelled from it like a magnet -- but it's the only place he could go. It stands in front of him, and he has to move forward._

_Cas hands him a pomegranate._

_"You must eat the whole thing. It will let your body pass through Hell, for a short time."_

_Dean takes the fruit, biting into it after a moment of consideration. The taste is sour, almost bitter, but there's a kind of ring of sweetness around the skin, not completely unappealing, though he can't imagine picking up more to snack on later. The damned thing is chock full of seeds, but Castiel urges him to continue, making him eat until the fruit is completely gone, and he swipes his thumb over the flat of his tongue to get rid of the sticky juice. It's already run between his fingers though. Cleaning up is a lost cause._

_"Good," Castiel nods. "Now, remember, you need that in you to keep your body safe, so you must not defecate while you are down there."_

_Dean, still chewing, almost chokes on the last bite._

\-----

Dean staggers, almost loses his grip on the soul and stumbles to his knees when he emerges from Hell.

The air is fresh, and so sweet and cool, like water from an icy spring in the dead of winter, and it floods his lungs, washing away all the dust and ash of Hell. He feels his muscles bunch and he coughs for a minute, eyes squeezing shut. It's only when he gets his breath back that he realizes that he can't feel Sam in his arms, the weight of him gone and vanished.

Panic flares up in him, intense enough to rock the world, and he looks down, expecting to see nothing, expecting that, with his kind of luck, the soul will have disappeared and everything he just did was for nothing. But Sam is still there, still cradled in his arms. Except that little soul isn't firm anymore, isn't some physical object, even if he's holding it like it is. It's thready and insubstantial, flickering and making the air all around Dean colder. A spirit, devoid of a body. Dean's seen hundreds. 

"Sammy," he murmurs uselessly, voice tinged with tones of relief and fear at the same time. The spirit's eyes tick up to him, still there, still with him, and Dean gives him a tight smile, something he hopes is reassuring. "Almost over, little brother."

It's nighttime now. Dean feels like he must have been gone for weeks, but he knows he's only gone a few hours. There is acrid smoke rising up off of his clothes, gradually being cleansed by the slow Wyoming breeze. Castiel is gone, but Sam's body is still there, still sitting on the top of a tombstone. He jumps down when Dean looks at him, and begins to walk over, his unfeeling eyes looking over the soul with little more than intellectual curiosity.

Dean stares at the body as he approaches: a collection of Sam parts that still don't add up to _Sam_ , because Sam is in his arms. All the things about Sam that matter, all the things that count, are whispering away into the crisp spring air, bleeding ozone like a wound.

Dean knows if he couldn't get the body to accept Sam, then Sam would drift away, unrestrained now, open in the world. Maybe he would become a wandering spirit whose bones couldn't be burned because his body was still alive. The thought tears another thin line in Dean, uncertain what's worse: Hell or the mindless grief of the restless dead. He can't stand the thought of that being Sam's fate, finally free of Hell after who knows how many hundreds of years down there.

" _Please_ ," he begs, finally, not above going to his knees, not above bowing and groveling, not for Sam. He's never above anything, when it comes to Sam. But it's not up to him. Ultimately, it's the body's choice, and the soul is an unappealing mass of pain and punishment. And Dean can't blame him. What the body said before is true: If someone offered Dean the chance to give up all his feelings, all the pain and memories of Hell and let him sit in a comfortable numb, he'd take it. There'd be no joy or celebration, but that ripping pain, that age old despair would be gone too, and it would be worth it. Dean knows he'd refuse to take it back, if the positions were reversed, if he were watching his soul wisp away into nothing, and good riddance.

But his soul is irrevocably bound to him now, seared in by an angel's hand, as firmly in place as it had been the day he was born. Instead, it's his little brother, who is smart and good and heartfelt; who is well intentioned, bullheaded and stubborn, and the biggest pain in Dean's neck, and deserving of so much more than just a _chance_ ; his little brother, borne up from Hell and going to die anyways. Dean feels something thick and cloying stick in his chest, something too close to grief to look at straight on.

Except the body reaches out, unexpectedly welcoming broad hands spreading wide, offering to take the weightless burden. His eyes are calm and steady, emotionless. Dean's breath hitches, feeling his heart wrench to give away the spirit in his arms, even to its rightful owner, but he gently transfers Sam into the body's grasp, throat suddenly tight with fear. He imagines the body's hands clenching, dispersing the soul like smoke and saying ' _Not a chance in hell_.' 

But the body pulls the soul close, leaned up against his chest as if it were a real thing, a child like any other, asleep and worn out from too long a day. The body looks down at him, then at Dean. He looks straight at Dean and nothing else when he pulls that ember back into him, a brief flare of light, more existential than real, and Dean almost covers his eyes.

"Why?" Dean asks, voice tight as he lowers his arms, still uncertain what changed, what convinced a creature devoid of feelings to give in to nothing more than an emotional appeal. Sam looks at him, and his voice is full -- hurting but complete.

"Because you're Dean, and all you've ever had to do was ask."

And Dean never realized that life could be so simple.


End file.
